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My sister told me that today Basilio did not show up for meals. Since Sunday he had been a bit lethargic and had very little appetite. And now he hasn’t returned. I have blogged about Basilio before, about six years ago, when he went missing when he was still a kitten. At that time we thought that he was gone forever, until my dad started asking around the neighborhood and found out that a little kid had kept him as a pet for a while, after he ended up at their house.

Now, I don’t know if there will be a happy reunion, as he is now older, more gruff and because we never had him neutered, more battle-scarred. He had always been an outside cat, but since our other male cat, Nemon, disappeared, he became more aloof and the traces of that sweet cat was gone. It was only recently that my sister had convinced him to come inside the house and sometimes he would sleep in her room.

And then this. If there is anything I know about cats, it’s that they tend to make themselves scarce when they are sick… and sometimes they never come back. They won’t return home to die.

I want to be optimistic about this. After all, it wasn’t the first time that he had been away from home longer than a couple of days as an adult. Maybe it is the stress from work, but I have this ominous feeling that I will never see him again.

There are days when I just collapse in bed after getting home from work and waking up past midnight.

Most days I do not find the time or energy to do things I enjoy, like reading, listening to music or watching something on Netflix.

I am exhausted all the time. That is why I feel exceedingly happy when I have an opportunity to take a siesta (such as when there are long weekends).

I neglect even my daily routines. Things I now do only sporadically: meal prepping, writing on my bullet journal, moisturizing my face in the evening.

I feel like I do not have time to finish all the things I need to do. This week I went to school for seven days straight. Monday to Friday, work. Saturday, extra classes. Sunday, marking papers. I still have a pile of stuff that needs to be done. It is like the seven days in the week is not enough for all of it.

Teaching is one of those careers where burnout is very common. I feel like this time is different. More than anything, it is the sheer amount of work that needs to be done is doing me in.

What’s the key to enjoying life? Or at the very least, what is the key to a non-shitty existence?

I think it is having the ability to be happy by yourself.

There are many things that can be sources of self-fulfillment: work perfomance, an artwork, a personal goal that you are able to reach. It makes a person happy in the sense that for something that they spend time and effort on, there are tangible or at least conceivable results, which can be a source of pride and feelings of fulfillment.

But often we need other people to reach happiness and self-actualization. We want someone to appreciate our efforts, comment on a job well done, made to feel that our achievements also make them proud and happy on our behalf. Someone to do things that make us feel special. Especially in an age of oversharing, our desire to be noticed and appreciated even gets more intense. Like posting something on social media and waiting for the “likes” to pour in.

It is this desire that often lead us to feel underappreciated. But we have to remember: everyone has their own lives to worry about. Just like how we fidget about something great (or even just mundane stuff), so do other people. Maybe if we care about others genuinely, we might get reciprocation.

Or maybe not. Expecting something in return is a recipe for disappointment. Even if it is, and especially if it is, from people we care deeply about, if our expectations are not met, it tends to hit us hard. So while we must also appreciate these people (because we genuinely care for them), we must not be thinking that they owe us something back. Or that it is their duty to make us feel special or loved. Lowering your expectations also diminish the possibility of disappointment. We can all live happier lives if we slowly disengage ourselves from the need to be noticed and appreciated by others, and instead find more contentment loving and appreciating ourselves.

I think that in this world where the idea of not being in control of your own life is a possibilty (often more so for people who are trapped in unfortunate situations not of their doing such as extreme poverty, natural disasters, political instability or war), it becomes all the more important to be able to depend on onself for validation than to seek it from other people. If you expect it from others, then you must also be prepared for the harsh bite of reality.

I did end up confronting the puta on the day that I wrote about wanting to do it. She flat out denied that she had anything to do with what happened the week prior, saying things like: “Geez, all this time I thought you two were doing okay,” “I never told him to leave you,” “I don’t see how I can be the reason for you two almost breaking up. It’s way beyond me.”

It was way beyond me to comprehend the bold faced lying. I ended up quoting her the stuff that she told my boyfriend after he told her that there was a change of plans. Juicy, angry statements like, “If you’re tired of running the hamster wheel, get out,” “whenever you decide on a ‘let’s see’ you decide having it on repeat.” The latter obviously said to attempt to change his mind about giving our relationship another try. Well, as the saying goes, “the liar is brother to the thief.”

She has not sent a rebuttal for me since, and it looks like she did not contact him either. Well, who knows, she just might be biding her time, when he returns to Germany.

I really, really want to confront that stupid bitch but I don’t have time for her drama. I really am very tempted, though.

She is under the notion that I owe her an apology, but what she doesn’t know was that I read their logs and I know exactly what she’s on about. She messaged him last night about coming over “for 12 hours or a day” after exiting to Singapore. And when he told her that I was coming with him and we’d be there for a weekend, she went “she’s tagging along? never mind, then”. Still very much desperate to make him go see her behind my back. She operates on the premise that if I’m to go with him to Surabaya, I should “clear the air”. As if it was me who was working behind the scenes to sow discord between two people in a relationship. She disgusts me. I want to wash her brains off of filth, but I honestly have no time to waste for that lowlife. I have a busy job, a boyfriend, and a nice weekend up ahead in Singapore. :) Envy is indeed an incurable disease.

My boyfriend and I had been having relationship problems, and somehow, even on the verge of a breakup, we managed to come to a compromise that’s not too harsh or hurtful to us two. But apparently not to his friend, who had been actively campaigning to get him to break up with me. And for a reason because she had all to gain from our loss, like a vulture hovering over a dying animal. In the course of two weeks she went from “mend things with her” to “end it to not prolong the drama”. The heart of it was his planned trip to see her in her city while I was out of town myself. The compromise was, after many days and nights of suffering, that he would see her at a later date (they were friends and I cannot really stop him from being friends with her) but I would be coming with him. Not really to chaperone, but for my peace of mind. Long story short, I had reasons to not trust her. And it turned out to be correct, because after he told her about the change of plans, she got angry. Three minutes after first chatting him up, she sent him an audio asking, “So guide me through this again, what exactly did you talk about? And why would she (sic) come here when she doesn’t wanna see me? What’s the point? Sorry.” Her voice trembled, breaking. That’s how disappointed she was that he didn’t break up with me the day before, and how broken she was after him changing his plans, after our “long talk”, as if I, his girlfriend of three and a half years, had no right to try to fix things and save our relationship. I basically cockblocked her, so of course she would be feel hurt and disappointed.

He gave her possible weekends, and she shot it down with, “sorry, I’m busy with work.” This is in spite of the fact that many chat lines later, she actually offered to let him tag along so he could see a real Javanese wedding (she works assisting an uncle with filming weddings). They had chatted between 7 am and past 7pm. She tried to “guilt trip” him into changing his mind, including a threat to tell me that she “made him think of a threesome with his dad without even dropping ‘menage a troi'” which did nothing for her case and proved just what a dirty rag she is for titillating another woman’s man. By the end of it she was trying to cajole him with the promise of a first hand experience of a Javanese wedding. The irony of it. A wedding!

So yeah, so much drama. If anything came out of this, it’s that I am more trusting of him now, knowing that he values our relationship and that he believes we have a good chance of making each other happy. She told him that he was delusional for thinking that, but who’s the delusional one now? If she was indeed a friend with no hidden or obvious agenda (she’s pretty shameless when it comes to titillating guys via chat), she wouldn’t get in the way of the two of us, especially when we’re trying to mend what was broken and were actually making good progress except for that one thing where she was involved. She’s not messaging him, AFAIK. Obvs not interested in seeing him anymore. Such a drama 👑.

This morning my Go-Car cancelled, so I had to call for a Blue Bird. I was pleasantly surprised that my driver was female and had a hijab. Okay, female taxi drivers were few, but they definitely had them in Jakarta. I was surprised that I would encounter one in Semarang.

It’s a breath of fresh air after all the stress my boyfriend and I are going through, courtesy of his slut friend. Wish I could write more but it’s left me all exhausted and besides, I have a paying job to attend to.